Michelle Kennedy is a freelance director, writer, dramaturg and bossy pants. She writes fiction, plays, erotica, music reviews, tweets (@mnancyken) and blogs. She is a horrible poet. She is also a sex educator and might totally write about that too!

the fringe always seems to fly by whether we like it or not and man oh man is it flying!

in a minute i am going to reflect a bit on the days so far but I wanted to share a beautiful review of the show. I am not much for caring about stars for personal gratification; marketing of course, but a relatively arbitrary star distinction doesn't make me feel good or bad about myself as an artist. what can make me feel good is nice words, used together in a nice way, to offer feedback and/or criticism. that makes me feel happy... the opposite is also obviously true.

so i wanted to share a review with you. it's maybe a bit "braggy" and i apologize for that... but i am proud of the work we have done on trout stanley and proud of what we are continuing to do as the festival keeps on rolling.

so, liz nicholls from the edmonton journal had this to say about our 2013 fringe production of claudia dey's trout stanley:

4 stars

Stage 9, Telus Telephone Museum

Trout Stanley is, quite literally, a captivating play. It creates a
shimmering, crazy world, puts a spell on you, and makes you believe in
it.

In a remote B.C. town between Misery Junction and Grizzly Alley, we
meet up with the orphaned Ducharme twins, Grace and Sugar, who used to
be triplets, on their 30th birthday. Grace runs the town garbage dump
and poses for hunting season catalogues; the reclusive Sugar, who’s worn
her dead mother’s tracksuit for 10 years, makes “tragic figurines.”

Every year on their birthday, something terrible happens, and it has
again on the big three-oh: a murdered stripper/ Scrabble champion. Into
the sibling equilibrium arrives a possibly sinister, but oddly earnest,
drifter in a borrowed cop suit, “looking for something I lost.” What
kind of name is Trout Stanley? he’s asked. “A fish name.” His parents
drowned before he could ask them why.

You’d be tempted to call Claudia Dey’s play Canadian Gothic for its
macabre whimsy. The ingredients are there, and there’s a murder mystery
to be solved. But suddenly you’ve found that whole verbal fireworks,
kind of kooky and kind of magnificent, have burst across the play. And
you might want to call it a fairy tale, since the wooing of the
woe-struck Sugar by Trout Stanley is at its heart; it’s a tale of love
and loss, not necessarily in that order.

Its idiosyncrasies are elusive. Its images are lavishly bestowed. As Trout Stanley says, “I believe in the long way round.”

Michelle Kennedy’s production is an intriguing blend of real and
fanciful. Byron Martin is wonderful, soulful and mysterious, as a
lyricist of loneliness who, discovers, once they start tumbling out,
that he’s sitting on a vast reservoir of words. Sugar’s strange mixture
of woe and wonder, with its unexpectedly matter-of-fact wit, is captured
memorably by Jessica Peverett. And Amanda Bergen is a vivid Grace,
earthy and swaggering and indefinably odd.

There are moments where Michelle Kennedy’s cast tends to chatter,
understandable since Trout Stanley is quite a mouthful. But when the
actors can swing on the poetic language and make it their own, it’s a
beautiful thing.